The Committee Room

Biased minutes. A chair ignoring a committee decision he disagrees with. A treasurer who resigned with no notice and took everything with them. A president who's been in the job for eleven years and nothing ever changes. Real questions from real committee members — and in this first Your Questions Answered special, Kate H and Kate M work through eleven of them in plain English. With the occasional...

One subcommittee signs a two-year venue contract nobody authorised. Another finds the perfect venue, waits for committee sign-off, and loses it while they're waiting. Both end badly. Both have the same cause: nobody wrote down who was actually allowed to do what. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case for the delegations register — not as dry governance paperwork but as one of the most pr...

Seven people trying to run every aspect of their organisation by themselves. Three-hour meetings. The same three people doing all the actual work. Burnout setting in. And meanwhile a significant chunk of the membership — talented, interested, willing to contribute — has never once been asked. In this episode Kate H and Kate M introduce three structures that fix this: portfolios, subcommittees and...

You've just been elected to the committee. Someone slides a 100-page manual across the table and says, read through this when you get a chance. Three months later you're still not sure what your role is, who does what, or why half the things you're voting on are even necessary. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case that induction is a process, not a document — and that it starts well bef...

A $14,362 line item in miscellaneous expenses. Budget was $2,000. No explanation. Two committee members noticed it. Nobody said a word. The reports were approved and the meeting moved on. Six months later, the organisation discovered where the money had gone — and the paper trail led straight back to that meeting. In this episode Kate H and Kate M get into why people don't ask the hard questions —...

It's AGM night. Four usual suspects nominate each other. A hand shoots up from someone nobody's seen in two years. Another from the member who's complained loudly at every event for the past twelve months. Seven people are declared elected to stilted applause. Six months later, everyone's wondering why everything has gone sideways. In this episode Kate H and Kate M make the case for ditching nomin...

Every committee member carries three legal duties from the moment they're elected — whether anyone told them about it or not. Care, Loyalty and Obedience. They sound like an old-fashioned wedding vow, and it turns out they're very serious indeed. In this episode Kate H and Kate M explain what each duty actually means in plain English — the duty of care and why 'I assumed someone else had checked i...

Someone has just been elected to the committee. They turn up to their first meeting excited and ready to contribute. Nobody introduces them. Nobody explains what they're supposed to do. Three months later they're still not sure what their role is or whether they've made any difference at all. In this episode Kate H and Kate M unpack the three dimensions of committee responsibility — organisational...

Before you can govern well, you need the right people around the table. But most committees are structured the way they are because that's what the constitution says, or because that's how it's always been done. Neither is a good enough reason. In this episode Kate H and Kate M tackle committee composition from the ground up — the three committee models and when each one makes sense, why seven to...

It's 8pm on a Tuesday. You're in a community hall that smells of burned coffee and the meeting was supposed to start an hour ago. If that sounds familiar, this podcast is for you. Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee are governance consultants who've spent decades helping volunteer committees stop doing things the hard way. In this first episode they explain what governance actually is, why it matters, an...